digitailor

Also agreed brands could do their own manufacturing and reap tremendous advantages- but that's a whole 'nother disruption!

I think this strategy is untenable for almost all of the designer brands in the market you're addressing, because the assumption of all the risk is not a good business model in any industry.

Let's look at VC for a moment. Having been involved in it, there is an obsession with risk analysis and reduction, and with good reason. A model that says "Let's take 100% of the risk and capture the margins!" probably can't support a whole market shift, and would probably be difficult to fund. And funding of some kind would be necessary for most brands to be able to stock goods.

You're very knowledgeable about the back-end of the apparel business, it was cool to see a story like this on the front page of HN.

TL;DR: The author's thesis is that wholesale apparel designer brands can recoup margins by selling direct online. The way this will be accomplished is by the brand itself holding inventory.

Here's 100 years of experience condensed into four words, so if you're considering disruptive ideas in the apparel industry (like this one) please consider that:

INVENTORY IS THE ENEMY.

I am part owner of a 100-year old vertical apparel outfit in midtown Manhattan, and was there on hand every day for 12 years. We make custom men's suits and sell direct to the consumer, but that's only been the main revenue stream for a little more than a decade.

My great-grandfather started the business as a wholesale manufacturer in Brooklyn circa 1913, and my grandfather grew it into a national wholesale men's clothing line, supplying many of the nation's stores with their private-branded tailored clothing lines.

My father took the big move of selling direct to the customer in the late 70s, from the factory and warehouse on 5th ave in Manhattan. By the early 80s, especially as the result of clever marketing and other market factors, the retail business exploded. The consumers LOVED that the clothing was made in NYC, that they could see it being made, and that it was less expensive because middleman margins had been cut out.

So, my father bought a huge former department store on Broadway in the mid-80s, with a three-floor factory above, and was pumping out suits in record quantities (for our business). Also, our suits were wholesaled to Japan, Germany, etc, under our name.

Then the market shifted. Suddenly my father was stuck holding quantities he couldn't move. (The same thing had happened to my grandfather numerous times.) Overseas manufacturing hit full swing, and even with the cut margins, it was getting impossible to compete. We nearly went bankrupt by the time the "casual trend" hit during the tech boom of the late nineties.

In 1999, I came in to help shift the factory back to purely custom-made tailored clothing. NO INVENTORY. MADE TO ORDER ONLY. It was a huge retooling process, and since I was in my early 20s and there are no baby boomers who learned custom tailoring, I had to fill in the generation gap by learning the craft completely, and computerizing the whole pattern-making process. (Doing this custom is a near-impossible task that few do, and I eventually wrote my own software for it.)

We had to stop stocking inventory or we never would have made it to 100 (this year) if we had hung on to the idea that a small brand can hold its own inventory.

Here's an old Jewish garmento joke from the 70s, it's caustic but we say it often: "Inventory killed more Jews than Hitler."

There are very few brands out there that can handle vertical operations like this, and fewer people to manage it. Trust me, we've been hiring candidates for ages.

Brands will incur all that additional personnel overhead and the incredible risk of stocking inventory, and need the huge marketing budget to sell purely online with no retail locations to build awareness (or at least be reliant on their existing, pissed off accounts for that). The author recognizes this, but glosses over it, and that's why I told this long story.

The real disruption of the apparel industry is technologically enabled mass customization. This has been talked about for ages but the operational skill to pull it off at scale is not there. I was granted a patent on using bodyscanners to make custom clothing years ago, in anticipation of this disruption, and I'm still waiting for it to happen, but it seems faaaar off.

The author says that a brand holding its own inventory is the "new" industry model. It is actually one of the oldest and most dysfunctional, and fraught with risk.

Theoretically you would have the HLL incredibleness of a lisp with the low level genius of Forth. I asked some old timers if the idea made sense and they were silent in specifics but not discouraging. Which would indicate to me they think it is a huge learning opportunity for me one way or the other. Have you done any deeper analysis?

Currently working on an ARM forth-idea with some scheme-ideas. There's this nagging intuition I have that there's a symbiosis between Lisp atom/Forth word and S-expression/Forth dictionary.

I have to get something going pretty quickly so I can't get too pure about the idea, as I don't want to get bogged down in the necessary GC yet.

Thanks for your reply, it already made me more interested in Factor from an implementation standpoint, even if I wouldn't use it on x86.

And it's a very coherent idea. It's meant to respect processor architecture while maintaining a good level of comprehensibility to the human. And it keeps a MUCH closer correspondence between "word" (essentially a routine) and actual instruction. That got WAY lost with C, enter the beast-compiler.

I think of it as a concept layer above assembly, that has features far beyond just mnemonic value. It's like Lisp to me- a language whose "syntax" is dictated by the functional necessity of a computing methodology, not the decisions of language designers. For me at least, the approach leads to much higher productivity for a variety of reasons.

There's also a very high probability that Forth is the first thing to be run when you turn on the computer or cellphone you're reading this from.

Now as to Factor... see my post above and help me out!

On ARM it would be interesting- or if it had a highly modular structure that would allow it to be "easily" ported to other microprocessors.

But on x86? What niche is it trying to serve? Is it a language-lover's-language? I guess what I'm asking is, why would I use a "high-level" Forth on x86? There has to be a reason, I'm just missing it.

Good point. High stakes make for deliberate interface design.

I think the author is confused. He isn't talking about interfaces, he's talking about functionality. In his examples of mobile applications, interface is actually everything: the app is a point of overlap between the user's singular need and the tool that provides a targeted solution. (We can argue over the distinction of user interface vs. interface, but I posit the former follows the latter.)

In other words, the mobile app interface is not non-existent, but perfect: a single point of overlap between need and function.

From the article: That’s precisely what a tool is: something which requires very little explanation for how to use it, because it is designed so precisely for its purpose, that how to use it is obvious. If you’re trying to dig a hole with your hands, you don’t need much explanation for how to use a shovel. “This is the handle” is about the extent of it.

That's an example of a perfect interface, not no interface!

With the macro you can use arbitrary divisors though ;)

Any desire to refactor that beast?

The call is

  (fizzbuzz (100 (((3 5) "fizzbuzz")(3 "fizz")(5 "buzz"))))

  (defun make-cond (item)
  (let ((divisors (first item))
	(exclamation (second item)))
    (if (listp divisors)
	(let ((div1 (first divisors))
	      (div2 (second divisors)))
	  `((and (= 0 (mod n ,div1)) (= 0 (mod n ,div2)))
	    (format t "~a: ~a~%" n ,exclamation)))
      `((= 0 (mod n ,divisors)) ;else
	(format t "~a: ~a~%" n ,exclamation)))))

  (defmacro fizzbuzz (params-list)
  (destructuring-bind (num-to req-list) params-list
    (let ((cond-list '(((= 0 n)))))
      (loop for item in req-list do
	    (push (make-cond item) cond-list))
      `(dotimes (n ,num-to)
	 (cond ,@(reverse
		  (push '(t (format t "~a~%" n))
			cond-list)))))))

Wow. Great article. This made me understand some reasons why I am having such a great relationship with my current main customer.

After doing a simple web design job for them to get my foot in the door, I negotiated a higher rate for a more complex project. After that, they quadrupled my rates, on their own. They then fed me more, smaller projects that were mostly to fatten up their product offerings.

Such a show of faith really won my loyalty. I was, however, a little mystified. Maybe it's low self-esteem, but I found it hard to believe how much they valued my skillset (I'm one of those "designgeneers").

This article helped to explain this: they've been feeding me work to keep me available, even if they don't really need it. Now a big from-scratch devel job has come up, and even though I'm working under my rates, I made sure to be available to do it for them. They've been grooming me for this job, and they did it in exactly the way this article describes.

I'm really grateful for being treated this way. I've been on the cusp of two industries for a while now, and this kind of positive experience has pushed me to the software side.

"Another reason is that software skills are the most portable high-end skills on the planet. Spotting and temporarily attracting talent doesn’t mean you get to keep it."

We're really starting to be valued. All in all, this article made me feel really good about my decision to commit to designing and building web applications as my main vocation.

  (dotimes (n 100)
	   (cond ((= 0 n))
		 ((and (= 0 (mod n 3))(= 0 (mod n 5)))
		  (format t "~a: Fizz Buzz!~%" n))
		 ((= 0 (mod n 3))
		  (format t "~a: Fizz!~%" n))
		 ((= 0 (mod n 5))
		  (format t "~a: Buzz!~%" n))
		 (t (format t "~a~%" n))))

This article emphasizes making, which I think is important. It reminds me of my great-grandfather, who came to the US from Poland and started a clothing manufacturing business (that still exists to this day). I learned to make custom-tailored clothing by being in the business.

There was an opportunity back then for anyone willing to learn to make something and sell it. There simply aren't too many of these kind of opportunities today. Coding is definitely one of them. All I have learned from tailoring- the act of making something from scratch- has helped me as a developer. And vice versa.

"Most academic training is focused on teaching students theory, not practice."

The maker type of entrepreneurship requires a practical, work-based education, and college doesn't always provide for that. You learn to make by doing. It's circular: You learn to make by making. The resources for learning to code are readily available, and anyone willing to start making their own projects can teach themselves.

Another thing school can't teach you is what to make. This is where learning to code comes in: if you have experience with something else, you can code tools for that something else.

There are a ton of uses for drawing with CSS; I had a big commercial project that was pulled off this way. Requirements were no Flash and no SVG. It's the live "fear gauge" on this page: http://www.marketpsychdata.com/ (Unlike this demo, it uses images, and is not pure CSS drawing).

I went through a round of neurochemically-inspired regret for the things undone this year too. It's not true; it's just a figment of our mood-states. I've found it helpful to remind myself constantly that thoughts and feelings are transient; actions are what really count. So no matter what I feel like, I can still function in some capacity.

Besides, you're on HN, you must be doing something right.

For me, I didn't get diagnosed until this year, and I'm 32. It gets worse as you get older.

It took one hospitalization and a treatment center for me to get properly treated.

Bipolar used to be called manic depression, because it is characterized by two main phases:

Depression: Usually more severe than even Major Depressive Disorder in bipolars. High risk of suicide. Suicidal ideation, inability to eat, complete loss of functioning, etc.

Mania or Hypomania: Periods of highly elevated mood. May exhibit grandisoity, visions, hallucinations, increase in spending and sexual activity. Increase in irritability.

There's mixed states too, like a wired depression that is lethal. They're not as common.

The #1 symptom of all mood disorders is sleep disturbance.

If you're truly bipolar, you need medication. This is not my opinion, this is the current obligated medical treatment.

What I have seen from my bipolar friends who go off their meds has often been horrifying. It's incredibly common, unfortunately, largely stemming from beliefs like this post posits: it's just a discipline issue, it's a phase, it's an attitude, etc.

As always, try to avoid medical advice from usenet posts. Your loved ones will thank you.

If anyone else relates too and has not been diagnosed, I am here for any questions at all.

Please, please reach out. It's estimated that 1 in 4 untreated bipolar people commit suicide. This is a physiological disease that is no joke, not a "mindset" or attitude.

There's one thing I'd like to point out. You can teach the techniques of art, which are used for creating art. You can teach the techniques of programming, which are used for creating software. You can't teach how to create something that's never been created before.

That goes for creating ground-breaking art, as well as ground-breaking software.

Often, it's a set of disparate and interdisciplinary techniques, seemingly unrelated, that are used together to create the cutting-edge.

Quote of the day.

And more than one person has thought they were hallucinating when they saw my screen change temperature, timed to the sunset outside. Extra bonus awesomeness.

The point is, lisps have sometimes been referred to as "syntaxless" historically, for the reason that the grammar is that of the AST, not an arbitrarily designed grammar.

Ie. machine's grammar vs language designer's grammar.

You are right in saying it is not entirely correct to refer to them as syntaxless from a purely technical, linguistic point of view. But by throwing out his point as "technically incorrect", you are missing an important point about lisps.

Also, mentioning tokens that are used in Common Lisp doesn't quite compare to the verbose, heavily syntactical grammar of say, C++. Let me know the next time your lisp implementation throws you something called a "syntax error". You can't even get code to compile when you miss a parenthesis, which takes about three seconds to locate, tops.